The Unexpected

"Do you believe in monsters?" the words rose in his mind, but he pushed them back.

Pressing his thin lips tightly together, he lifted the violin again. Of course he knew Mendelsohn, and from the theme of the Concerto he could deduce what sort of music she needed to hear. He played, she worked, and the world made some sort of sense for a few short hours. Watching her walk away ushered in that aching chill. To drive it away, the Phantom began to play softly to himself.

At first the tune wandered and refused to take shape. He was patient. He was always patient with the music; it was the one thing in his cold world that he trusted. Finally, it moved into a pattern and took a shape – a feminine shape, walking in cool, crisp autumn air. Just that, and nothing more. It was enough.

Christine glanced at her phone. Nine voicemails. She stirred the simmering spaghetti sauce and tapped "call back."

"Do I know you?" a suspicious voice on the other end asked.

"Hi, Meg."

"Oh, no. This isn't Meg. Meg had this number in the last millennium…"

"It has NOT been that long. Look, I've just been out and about. You know how I do sometimes." Christine combed her thoughts, trying to figure out how much she could tell Meg without telling Meg.

"Ok, so did you find something good?" Meg sounded eager. Christine last completed a drawing several weeks before and had been in something of a funk since then.

"Maybe. It might be really good, but it's kind of a secret, ok? I can't tell you about it, and I can't take you there with me. Not yet, anyway."

A long silence followed this. Christine waited it out.

"Why not?"

"Because I kind of got special permission. And I might not be around much for awhile, because I have no idea how long it'll last."

"Ok, now I'm dying. I MUST know. Tell me and I won't breathe it to a soul. NObody. I swear!"

"Sorry, Meg. But we'll still do Sundays."

"You missed last Sunday."

"But from here on. All the Sundays are yours, ok?"

"Ok."

From there, the chat moved to life and work and all things normal. Christine enjoyed the conversation, relieved that an acceptable compromise had been found. She could release some guilt and focus on her new subject.

For three weeks, a routine emerged, stranger than any routine Christine had ever had. Every weekday she spent her workday dreaming about her evening and her evening in a dream, drawing the opera house from several angles while floating on her invisible host's music. Some evenings, she had a request. She needed something fast, something slow, something Brahms or something Sibelius. Other evenings, she let the music flow as it would and admired the way it moved her hand across the page.

The Phantom likewise lived a dream. When the artist was there, he played for her. He learned and matched her moods with his musical offerings. He gave her the gift of safety and space. He mourned the days when it rained a cold rain and kept her from him and Sundays when she was conspicuously absent, but he looked for those days as well. There was a great project at hand.

On those empty holidays, he designed a costume that he thought might give his carcass the illusion of dignity. Everything was perfect, except the mask. That gave him no end of trouble. Once the fit was right, he couldn't breathe. Now he could breathe, but a quick touch-test determined that too much flesh was visible. Now it covered enough, but it was too heavy, and on and on. Finally, he was satisfied. The finished product was light enough to wear, and its strap covered what horror his hat and collar left exposed. A tight elastic and a little articulation allowed the jaw to move, only enough to speak.

A costume to turn a monster into a man. The irony had him shaking his head. The implications of having made the costume did, too. 'Just in case,' he told himself every time the notion of revealing himself to her arose. But the longer and harder he worked, the more 'just in case' felt like planning. He warned himself to be content to be her muse in her art, all the while painfully aware that no one would draw a single building forever.

That fatal Tuesday, Christine had been daydreaming all day. Her final study of the theater neared completion, and she knew what she needed to give it the final touches. The weather had turned sharply colder, and it was less and less pleasant to sit for hours, regardless of cushioning. As much as she hated to admit it, her time here was ending. As much as she wanted to finish her work, she also wanted to hear something one last time. No matter how she searched on google and youtube and rhapsody, she could not find the melody her muse had played that first day. It had sounded like no composer she knew, and yet the form was classical. Today, she would try to ask for music for which she had no name and no composer.

The Phantom was ready for any request. He, too, felt the change in the weather and saw the evolution of how closely the artist examined the building. His chances were running out, but what letter could he send that would not hasten her retreat? There she stood, cheeks red with cold, clouds of her breath puffing into the increasingly frosty air. He felt himself weaken. The disguise, the mask, the endless planning: all had been for naught. She would leave and his world would close in about him again. He would revert to being the Thing in the Dark. An "it," haunting deserted hallways.

"Hello?" She always began this way. "I wanted to ask for some music, but I don't know what it's called. Or who wrote it. So, I'm going to have to sing it to you. Sorry about that. I hope you can recognize it before I embarrass myself too badly."

He winced. This boded ill. She was an artist in the visual domain and had a deep love of music, but a deep love of music did not necessarily mean a deep skill in music. Still, he would bear it. He owed her for the most peaceful days he could remember.

"Ok. So, it's one of the pieces you played way back when I first came. It went something like this…"

And she began to sing.

He barely managed to set his violin down in his astonishment. Thin from lack of practice, breathy from lack of technique, still, the woman's instrument was sublime. Or it would be. With the right guide.

Before he could stop himself or even return to himself, the words tumbled out,

"Your voice…"